


That Which is Not Spoken

by seekergeek



Series: sub!John - A Survivor [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Dom!Nancy, Domestic Violence, F/M, Sub!John, abuse survivor!John, abusive spouse!Nancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-16
Updated: 2010-07-16
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:16:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekergeek/pseuds/seekergeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John was on his knees next to his wife. He focused his eyes on the floor, trying to breathe evenly and not set off the pain of his cracked rib. Nancy laid a heavy hand on his head. He closed his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which is Not Spoken

**Author's Note:**

> This story depicts a BDSM relationship gone horribly, horribly WRONG. It does not depict normal, safe, sane, consensual BDSM practices.

John was on his knees next to his wife. He focused his eyes on the floor, trying to breathe evenly and not set off the pain of his cracked rib. Nancy laid a heavy hand on his head. He closed his eyes.

"Oh yes, he's definitely pretty, but he's also a very bad boy most of the time, aren't you, pet?" Nancy said to one of John's father's friends. Some influential banker or something. John never could remember because they were all alike in their arrogant toppiness.

Suddenly she grabbed a fistful his hair and yanked his head back. This pulled the strained muscle in his back and made his cracked rib twinge and he was hard pressed to not pull in a sharp breath. "I said, aren't you, pet?" she repeated with false sweetness. John knew that tone well. It meant another beating for failing to attend to her every word again. "Yes, mistress," he murmured softly.

"Has my son been giving you a hard time again?" Patrick Sheppard asked her jovially as he stepped up beside the banker.

Nancy released John's hair to shake his hand, saying, "He does keep me busy, Patrick, but it's nothing I can't handle. He just needs a firm hand." John took the opportunity to lower his head back down and ease the stress on his back and ribs.

"And a regular caning, as I recall from his teenage years," Patrick said wryly. "He's always been a willful one." They all chuckled at that, his father because he thought it amusing and the banker and Nancy because they were fucking ass-kissers. John, with his scars, failed to find any amusement in it at all.

Patrick then gestured toward Nancy with his glass of scotch. "Say, his tour of duty is due to end soon, isn't it?"

Nancy's hand landed back on his head again and her fingers gripped his hair tightly. "Why yes, it is. And you'll be happy to know that I plan on chaining him to the bed until he's processed out so he can't re-up. I'm deathly tired of the Air Force telling my sub where to go and what to do. We'll finally be able to move into that house next to yours that you gave us for our wedding."

"Good! It will be lovely having you join the company and seeing him finally settling down to be a proper house sub. No more of this military nonsense!" Patrick replied cheerfully. "We could even have family dinners once a week at my place with Dave and his sub."

John closed his eyes and forced himself to not shudder, to not give himself away. They were planning on taking his flying away. As long as he had the sky he still had some modicum of freedom, and now they were going to stuff him into a box and drive the nails in. Panic ate at his stomach.

The banker engaged Patrick in a conversation about something that John didn't care in the slightest about and drew his father away. Some old cougar with a sharp smile replaced them, openly leering at John. "What a lovely boy you have," she purred at Nancy.

Nancy's grip on his hair grew tighter and John blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay. As Nancy replied back, he prayed that this particular display of jealous toppiness wouldn't result in her publicly fucking him like it had last time. It was beyond humiliating when she did that, and it got even worse for him afterwards if he couldn't keep it up for her.

Eventually the woman became bored with testing Nancy's dominance and left to go be lecherous at someone else, but the damage was done. Nancy was tense and seething at the perceived threat, and John suddenly knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was in real danger tonight. His heart fluttered rapidly like a trapped bird as he tried not to pant in fear. Oh, god. Oh, god.

She wrenched him up by his hair and John struggled to stand up fast enough so that she wouldn't yank it out by the roots, his knees protesting from the extended period of time he'd knelt on the the cold marble floor. "You know I don't like it when you're a slut," she hissed into his ear. "You made slut eyes at her, didn't you? Didn't you? Why can't you just behave?"

As John opened his mouth to protest fruitlessly that he hadn't, really he hadn't, Dave and his sub Linda suddenly appeared out of seemingly nowhere.

"Nancy! John! We have been looking everywhere for you!" Linda said brightly.

Dave smiled in amused tolerance at her and then turned to speak to Nancy. "We have spotted you a couple of times already, to be honest, but got caught in other conversations before we could get to you. You're not leaving already are you? We haven't had a chance to talk!"

Nancy released her grip on John's hair and made as if to pet his shoulder. He flinched as she did so and then cursed himself for having so little control over himself as she dug her fingers into his collarbone. "Well, you know how tense these things make John. I thought I might take him home and get him to relax a little as a reward."

Linda's eyes flickered over to John, her smile never wavering as she laughed lightly. "John, the introvert of the family, stressed out by this enormous company shindig? Why am I not surprised?" She then turned to Dave and leaned against his arm looking up at him disarmingly. "Dave, beloved, I know that you want to speak to Nancy about something terribly important, darling, but could I take John with me upstairs to the powder room while the two of you speak business? It has been ever so long since I've seen him, and I'd love some time to catch up."

Dave turned his gaze to Nancy and said with smile, "Would you mind? It has been a while since we've seen the two of you, and my Linda never seems to head to the powder room without at least one other sub with her. Usually a whole pack of them if she can get away with it." He reached over and stroked her face with a finger, his face warm with affection.

Linda laughed again and touched his hand gently with one of her own. "You know it's because we have to help each other primp to make ourselves look pretty for our tops, honey."

Nancy smiled that false, sweet smile and nodded. "Of course I don't mind. You're family, after all." She squeezed John's shoulder hard and then released it. "Go on, pet. I expect to see you all primped for me when you get back."

Linda took John gently by the arm and said conspiratorially, "Let's go gossip while they talk boring business stuff, shall we?" She drew him away and up the stairs while John tried to keep a lid on his relief at receiving what was likely to be an all too brief reprieve.

They entered the subs' powder room and Linda released his arm and locked the door behind them, her face suddenly serious. She then turned to him, gently tilted his head to the side, looking somberly at where he'd applied makeup to cover the last of a fading shiner that Nancy had given him a few days ago. "John," she said softly, "are you okay?"

His eyes slid away from her and he shifted uncomfortably. What could he possibly say? It wasn't like Dave or his father would step in to stop anything.

"John..." Linda reached out again, laid her fingertips under his chin, and lifted his head back up so that he had to look at her. "John, how badly injured are you?"

John wet his lips nervously. "Some bruises, some pulled muscles. A cracked rib. It was an accident. Nothing I can't handle."

Linda sucked in a breath. "Have you seen a doctor?"

John shook his head slightly. Nancy had forbidden him to go to the base hospital. She'd said that it was no fucking business of theirs what she did to discipline him and that she'd decide if he needed medical attention. That he was hers, damn it, to do with as she pleased and she wasn't sharing him with anyone, least of all some nosy base doctor. She wasn't going to tolerate another inquiry as to whether she might be being an unsafe top like she had at the last base.

"How long, John? How long has this been going on?" Linda asked him urgently.

John dropped his head down again. Too long. It had been going on for far too long and John didn't know how to get out of it. Nancy had the keys to the car, the keys to the house, the credit cards, the ATM card, his driver's license. She didn't allow him any cash at all, so he hadn't even been able to hide any away. He was forced to continue to submit because he didn't have any other options.

Linda reached forward and clasped her hands lightly on his arms. "John, sweetheart, this isn't right. You know it isn't. Do you need help? Do you need to get away from her? Please, if you do need help, tell me!"

Nancy's accusations repeated in his head, his collarbone throbbed from where she'd gripped him cruelly. Desperation finally crumpled the last of his pride. "Yes," he finally said in a whispered croak. "Yes, I need help."

Linda saved his life that night. She removed his hated collar. She gave him money, her ATM card and her cell phone. She snuck him out of his father's house and into a waiting cab that she'd called for and sent him to a safe house. She then went back inside and concocted some story that succeeded in keeping Nancy from looking for him for several crucial hours while John got away. In the following days, she got him in contact with an excellent divorce lawyer, who got John a court ordered injunction against Nancy. She also worked with the banks, trying her best to get him access to his own money. When Dave cottoned on to what she was doing and reluctantly forbid her to help John any further in what his infuriated father termed "this stupid rebellion", she'd called her mother, the formidable Bostonian socialite top Helen Cushing, who then proceeded to blandly ignore the sputtering of the Sheppard family tops and took over where Linda had had to leave off in assisting John: going with him and a police escort to get his stuff from the house; accompanying him for his own safety when he had to go shopping; and forcing Nancy to leave and then reporting her the two times she sought to violate the injunction. Nothing that Nancy threatened made Helen so much as turn a hair; and she remained, steadfast in her determination to provide him with any help he needed as his divorce request wound its way through court.

After what seemed to be an eternity, he stood in the lawyer's office with the final papers in his sweaty hands and his bags packed for his new overseas assignment. Relief washed over him as he realized that the nightmare was finally over. John looked up from the precious papers granting him his freedom to Helen, and finally had the courage to ask, "Why did you do this for me? You and Linda?'

She adjusted her leather jacket and brushed away a speck of dust from the sleeve before she answered dismissively, as if it were nothing, "It is just what my family does, dear boy. No one should ever be without hope of rescue in their darkest hour."


End file.
